A Blog by Dauphine Press

We’re wrapping up our tips for the Invitation Line of your wedding invitation wording. The invitation line can sometimes be tricky since family politics can be involved. We’ve covered the traditional route and the modern route for the invitation line {that’s the line on our invitations that indicates who will be hosting your wedding} and today we are going to cover one more option – casual.

INVITATION LINE – CASUAL
One of our goals in offering a custom design process for creating your wedding invitations was to allow every couple to personalize their stationery so that it truly reflects their personalities. It’s fun to see fun personalities shine through in the more casual designs we help couples create.

Today we’re sharing a collection of our favorite invitations with a casual invitation line. Hopefully, these will provide you with inspiration! A bonus, if your wedding day style is more traditional, you may want to consider one of these options for your rehearsal or brunch invitations.

Our Roseberry design begins with a gleeful exclamation! This sweet start really sets the tone for this casual wedding.

There’s something to be said for keeping it simple. Our Vreeland design is a perfect example of simplicity making a big statement. In addition, just using first names of the couple keep things casual.

The type treatment used on the names of this couple make quite a statement. The day is all about you! So, why not select a script font with all the embellishments to celebrate the new couple like our Lavinia design!

With the three main options for the top portion of your wedding invitation wording, next up we will cover the best ways to display your names and the Time + Place of your wedding; followed by additional details you need to share with your wedding guests.

We’re back with our next post in our Wedding Invitation Wording Guidelines! It is very important to finalize the wording on your wedding invitations before you have us begin the design process. It’s going to be in print and will be something that you will keep always, so it is best to focus on the wording alone as your first step in the process. Plus, getting this tough task out of the way means that the design process can be all about making it look good and complement your wedding decor!

As we noted in our last post, we’ve broken it down to four main sections: the invitation line, the couple, time + place and additional details.

INVITATION LINE – MODERN
In our first post of this series we covered traditional wording and the common rules of etiquette for the Invitation Line when your parents are hosting {paying for} the wedding. For today’s post, we will be covering a modern interpretation of the Invitation Line. More and more we see brides and grooms hosting their own wedding and excluding the tradition of having their parents listed on the invitation.

We’ve gathered a collection of examples to show you how an invitation comes together when the couples’ parents’ names are not included. You may choose this for a number of reasons, but we often see couples select this option when they are hosting their own wedding, when the family politics are just a tad too complicated to spell out on an invitation or when the couple wants to keep things simple and keep the focus of the invitation {and their wedding day} about them and their new union!

As with the traditional version, the second element of the Invitation Line with a modern twist is also the actual invitation or call to action. Just after the listing of the hosts, you’ll want to include “request the pleasure of your company at the marriage of …” or “invite you to celebrate the marriage of …”. It’s pretty much the same for both traditional and modern wording, with a few exceptions. With the modern versions, you will see the addition of phrases such as “because you have shared in their lives …” and “together with their families …” appearing before the names of the betrothed and in place of the parents names. We’ve collected a few examples to show you how these come together!

Our Yountville suite incorporates modern wording and a modern look. Here you see the use of “because you have shared in their lives” along with “through your love and friendship” to really involve the guests in their special day.

Our Greenwich wedding suite makes a bold statement with the names of the couple listed first in a decorative script typeface.

A great way to include your family, but not include all of the names of the parents is to choose words like the ones shown on our Calistoga wedding suite, which begins with “together with their families” before the names of the couple. And below on our Pacifica wedding invitation, you see this wording again, but in a classic layout for those wanting modern wording, with a traditional look.

This series has been a ton of fun for us to put together. We love sharing the tips and secrets we have learned over the years as well as go through old samples for lots of gorgeous inspiration! Feel free to contact us with any questions or topics you would like us to cover.

Recently we shared our best tips and favorite links for addressing your wedding invitations. Taking a step back today, we are giving our advice on one of the first items to check off of your wedding invitation to-do list – the wording! In a series of posts we will discuss a few of the common rules of etiquette along with tips we have learned after years of designing and printing endless variations of wedding stationery.

We know you’ve probably never written an invitation from scratch before, so we wanted to break it down into the different sections to keep things simple. We’ve broken it down to four main sections {and multiple posts}: the invitation line, the couple, time + place and additional details.

INVITATION LINE
The invitation line can be the toughest section for some couples, so we’ll start there. Since there are so many options, we will just be covering traditional wording in this post and will follow-up with more casual and modern options in additional posts.

Traditionally, the invitation line was determined by who was hosting {paying for} the wedding. If the bride’s parents are hosting, their names are listed first. This can be a sensitive area though with more and more couples paying for their own weddings, both sets of parents contributing and with divorced and/or remarried parents. We say follow your heart here. If you and your fiance are paying for the wedding, but you like the tradition of listing the bride’s {and/or groom’s} parents first, then do it!

The second element of the Invitation Line is the actual invitation or call to action. Just after the listing of the hosts, you’ll want to include “request the pleasure of your company at the marriage of …” or “invite you to celebrate the marriage of …”. We say go with the version that you like best, but keep in mind that traditionally “honor” or “honour” used in this line {ie. the honor of your presence at the marriage of …} is reserved for church ceremonies.

For inspiration, take a look through the many different ways we have worded traditional invitations with our Search by Style feature. Below are a few examples and highlights!

This sweet variation of our Sonoma wedding invitation suite {featuring a blush, apricot and pearl foil color palette!} shows a great example of traditional wording with the bride’s mother hosting the wedding.

This version of our Larkspur wedding suite includes a classic layout with the bride’s mother and father both mentioned, but the shift to using the more casual “invite you to celebrate” lightens the mood a little bit.

Our Broadmoor invitation displays a classic example of traditional wording with the bride’s parents listed and the use of “honour” indicates that this is a formal affair with the ceremony taking place in a church.

We love the way this couple decided to word their invitation! What a great way to honor the parents of both the bride and groom. The layout on this customization of our Occidental design could also work well for divorced parents.

We’re excited to be kicking off this series and we hope that you find it a valuable resource! We have many more tips and visual eye candy to help you design the ideal invitation for your event.